Poems About Poems V

Poems about Poems V Distances by Michael R. Burch There is a small cleanness about her, as though she has always just been washed, and there is a dull obedience to convention in her accommodating slenderness as she feints at her salad. She has never heard of Faust, or Frost, and she is unlikely to have been seen rummaging through bookstores for mementos of others more difficult to name. She might imagine “poetry” to be something in common between us, as we write, bridging the expanse between convention and something... something the world calls “art” for want of a better word. At night I scream at the conventions of both our worlds, at the distances between words and their objects: distances come lately between us, like a clean break. Nashville and Andromeda by Michael R. Burch I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again. It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps... How nakedly now and unadorned the surrounding hills expose themselves to the lithographies of the detached moonlight? breasts daubed by the lanterns of the ornamental barns, firs ruffled like silks casually discarded... They lounge now? indolent, languid, spread-eagled? their wantonness a thing to admire, like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh... They do not know haste, lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men, yet they please if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness by the erect pen... Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills, another forsakes sleep for the hour of introspection, gabled in loneliness, swathed in the pale light of Andromeda... Seeing. Yes, seeing, but always ultimately unknowing anything of the affairs of men. Resurrecting Passion by Michael R. Burch Last night, while dawn was far away and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies, as thunder boomed and lightning railed, I conjured words, where passion failed... But, oh, that you were mine tonight, sprawled in this bed, held in these arms, your breasts pale baubles in my hands, our bodies bent to old demands... Such passions we might resurrect, if only time and distance waned and brought us back together; now I pray that this might be, somehow. But time has left us twisted, torn, and we are more apart than miles. How have you come to be so far? as distant as an unseen star? So that, while dawn is far away, my thoughts might not return to you, I feed your portrait to the flames, but as they feast, I burn for you. Caveat by Michael R. Burch If only we were not so eloquent, we might sing, and only sing, not to impress, but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed. We might inundate the earth with thankfulness for light, although it dies, and make a song of night descending on the earth like bliss, with other lights beyond?not to be known? but only to be welcomed and enjoyed, before all worlds and stars are overthrown... as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face and find it beautiful for emptiness of all but joy. There is no thought to love but love itself. How senseless to redress, in darkness, such becoming nakedness... Originally published by Clementine Unbound Imperfect Sonnet by Michael R. Burch A word before the light is doused: the night is something wriggling through an unclean mind, as rats creep through a tenement. And loss is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss like lipstick through the infinite, to show love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go. We have not learned love yet, except to cleave. I saw the moon rise once... but to believe... was of another century... and now... I have the urge to love, but not the strength. Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length, lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams... and masturbating limply, screams and screams. To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering by Michael R. Burch The anachronism in your poetry is that it lacks a future history. The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell, tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell of insignificance, of eerie shoals, of voices underwater. Lichen grows to mute the lips of those men paid no heed, and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed, there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped, have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost. The argosy of all your toil is rust. The anchor that you flung did not take hold in any harbor where repair is sold. Nightfall by Michael R. Burch for Kevin Nicholas Roberts Only the long dolor of dusk delights me now, as I await death. The rain has ruined the unborn corn, and the wasting breath of autumn has cruelly, savagely shorn each ear of its radiant health. As the golden sun dims, so the dying land seems to relinquish its vanishing wealth. Only a few erratic, trembling stalks still continue to stand, half upright, and even these the winds have continually robbed of their once-plentiful, golden birthright. I think of you and I sigh, forlorn, on edge with the rapidly encroaching night. Ten thousand stillborn lilies lie limp, mixed with roses, unable to ignite. Whatever became of the magical kernel, golden within at the winter solstice? What of its promised kingdom, Amen!, meant to rise again from this balmless poultice, this strange bottomland where one Scarecrow commands dark legions of ravens and mice? And what of the Giant whose bellows demand our negligible lives, his black vice? I find one bright grain here aglitter with rain, full of promise and purpose and drive. Through lightning and hail and nightfalls and pale, cold sunless moons it will strive to rise up from its “place” on a network of lace, to the glory of being alive. Why does it bother, I wonder, my brother? O, am I unwise to believe? But Jack had his beanstalk and you had your poems and the sun seems intent to ascend and so I also must climb to the end of my time, however the story may unwind and end. Published as the collection “Poems about Poems V”